Monday morning

Thanks so much for your wise words and sympathy. I could feel it oozing across the wires? No, the microchips and air and whatever the fish the internet is made of. In our case, your care was sent up to a satellite and then beamed right back down to us. Very. Very. Slowly. Our satellite is out of alignment, or a tree is blocking it, or SOMETHING. All I know is that we tried to download the newest episode of The Office last night and the little bar on the screen said: Time left: 6 hours. And then, twenty minutes later it said: Time left: 7 hours. I am not kidding. I wouldn't joke about something like that.

Anyways. You are kind.

I liked what Carrien said about Super Grandmas. Because it's true, so much of this comes with experience, and the not so fun part is that you are basically thrown into the center of it without gaining the experience ahead of time. Although I have always been glad that you get a newborn first. That is, unless you adopt.

For instance, I don't know how many times I've wished that I was way older and knew how to throw a party already. One of those unadvertised requirements of being the mom in the family is throwing parties. I mean, even if you do nothing else, you end up throwing your kids and your husband birthday parties. For me, that's four parties a year. For some people, it could be seven, eight, nine, ten. HOW DO THEY GET ANYTHING ELSE DONE? I should probably lower my standards on the birthday front, I like to do big elaborate things that get better every year, but as the years have passed with Chinua I've realized that I've already got myself stuck in a corner. His thirtieth birthday was one of the best days of my life, and the next year I bought him a new guitar. (A homeless man walked into his room and stole his, back when we lived in the City.) How do you continue to top these things? I guess you don't. Especially not when you are potty training and tearing your hair out.

I know women who know how to throw parties (and why do we throw them? Why don't we carry them, or roll them?) like their lives depend on it, and they have helped me over the years. I'm learning the essentials: Food, guests, something to do, decorations. What I don't have down is the ability to make it look effortless. I generally stand around wringing my hands. Or smacking my head against the wall. Or shoving the guests. I need to learn to relax.

All with time and those Super Grandmas.

That was a huge rabbit trail. What I was going to write about was Monday Morning. And my lists. I'm trying very hard to keep functioning, keep moving, and so I write myself lists of all the things that need to get done. Usually they fall into about a billion different categories and threaten to split my brain in two. Things like, mail check, talk to R about reconciling accounts, work on reading with Kid A, write thank you cards, garden, laundry. The things I don't write down are: Spend time with friends, have fun with kids, be NICE. Then I sit and stare at my list.

Oh Monday. What hope, what wide clean pages! What a chance to get things on my list done! The week spread far before me, the lines on my "DayMinder" blinking at me, waiting. Oh, dear, dear, dear.